National Humanities Center Resource Toolbox
Becoming American: The British Atlantic Colonies, 1690-1763
New York Public Library
Library of Congress
European
Americans
and
African
Americans
View
Each Other
COLONIAL ERA
Selections
Benjamin Franklin
Phillis Wheatley
*
1
How did the African and European inhabitants of British America view each other in the 1700s before the Revolution? From
journals, narratives, reports, poems, a sermon, a letter, and runaway slave advertisements come these statements by white
colonists and former slaves as they consider the racial “other” in their lives. Although the record holds much more commentary by
whites than blacks, it yet reveals the “unhappy influence,” as Thomas Jefferson later noted, “on the manners [behavior] of our
1
people produced by the existence of slavery among us.”
2
Give Ear, ye pitied Blacks, Give Ear! It is allowed
in the Scriptures, to the Gentiles, That they May
1
keep
Slaves; although the Law of Charity requires
Rev. Cotton Mather, 1696
your Owners to Use you as those that have
Mather was a prominent Puritan clergyman
Reasonable Souls within you. Yes, ’twould be
in Boston, Massachusetts.
against the Conscience of any Good man to keep
you for Slaves if he find himself unable to use you according to that Law of Charity. But the most of you
have so little cause to desire your being any other than Slaves as you are, & where you are, that it would
soon make you miserable to be otherwise. You are better Fed & better Clothed & better Managed by far
than you would be if you were your Own men. All that now remains for you is to become first the Good
Servants of the Lord Jesus Christ, & then of those that have purchased you. . . .
“Give Ear, ye pitied Blacks, Give Ear!”
3
“they did not think God
made them Slaves”
William Moraley, early 1730s2
Moraley was a white English indentured
servant in the middle colonies.
*
I have often heard them say they did not think God made them
Slaves, any more than other Men, and wondered that Christians,
especially Englishmen, should use them so barbarously. But there
is a necessity of using them hardly, being of an obdurate, stubborn
Disposition; and when they have it in their power to rebel, are
extremely cruel.
National Humanities Center, 2009: nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds. Except for poems, spelling and punctuation modernized by NHC for clarity.
Complete image credits at nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/becomingamer/image credits.htm.
1
Except for Venture Smith’s statement at the conclusion of this compilation, the commentary of African Americans reflects their experiences during the
colonial era.
2
Rev. Cotton Mather, A Good Master Well Served: A Brief Discourse on the Necessary Properties & Practices of a Good Servant, in Every Kind of
Servitude, sermon, 1696. Accessed through Early American Imprints online collection, American Antiquarian Society; permission pending.
3
William Moraley, The Infortunate: The Voyage and Adventures of William Moraley, an Indentured Servant, 1743; eds. Susan E. Klepp & Billy G. Smith
(Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992, 2d. ed. 2005), p. 60; permission pending.
They import so many Negros hither that I fear this Colony
will some time or other be confirmed by the Name of New
William Byrd, 17363
Guinea. I am sensible of many bad consequences of
multiplying these Ethiopians amongst us. They blow up the
Byrd was an influential Virginia
planter and slaveholder.
pride, & ruin the Industry of our White People who, seeing a
Rank of poor Creatures below them, detest work for fear it
should make them look like Slaves. . . .
Another unhappy Effect of Many Negros is the necessity of being severe. Numbers make them
insolent, and then foul Means must do what fair will not. We have however nothing like the Inhumanity
here that is practiced in the [Caribbean] Islands, & God forbid we ever should. . . . 4
“Numbers make them insolent”
5
“cunning subtle fellows”
Runaway slave advertisements,
Virginia Gazette, 1745-17704
The standardized and derogatory
phrasing in runaway advertisements
reveal slaveholders’ awareness (conscious or not) of their slaves’ initiative
and intelligence.
CUFFEY & BACCHUS. “cunning subtle fellows.”
4-21 March 1745
STEPHEN. “he is a brisk, sensible lad, about 16 Years of Age, is
very artful and cunning, has been much whipt, which his Back
will shew”
8-15 May 1746
CAESAR. “he is a very cunning subtle Fellow, can read very well,
and write a little; it is suppos’d he will endeavor to pass for a free
Man, and follow the Shoemaker’s Trade as he understands a little
of the Business.”
20 March 1752
JACK. “He is a very ingenious fellow, can do cooper’s work [make wooden barrels], and is supposed to
have a pass from some villainous person or other, and will endeavour to pass as a freeman; and as
he is a sensible arch [crafty] fellow, probably he will attempt to make his escape from off this
continent.”
19 March 1767
CHARLES AND HIS WIFE. “[Charles] is very ingenious at any work; he has been used to hire his time,
and has a pass of Joseph Jones for that purpose which was not taken in when I sold him to
Lockhart. He took his wife with him, a Mulatto, about 19 years old, about 5 feet and a half high, a
very likely well shaped woman, and very ingenious at any work. The above slaves will endeavour
to pass for free man and woman, and as the man is a sensible arch fellow, he will probably attempt
to make his escape from off this continent”
14 May 1767
FREDERICK. “he is an artful cunning fellow. . . I have some suspicion he will endeavour to get on board
some vessel and go out of the colony as a free man.”
15 September 1768
PETER DEADFOOT. “he is so ingenious a fellow, that he can turn his hand to anything; he has a great
share of pride, though he is very obliging, is extremely fond of dress; and though his holiday
clothes were taken from him, when he first attempted to get off, yet, as he has probably passed for
a freeman, I make no doubt he has supplied himself with others, as such a fellow would readily get
employment.”
22 September 1768
CHARLES. “an artful cunning fellow . . . He is a sawyer and shoemaker by trade, and carried with him his
shoemaker's tools. The said fellow reads very well, and is a great preacher, from which I imagine
he will endeavour to pass for a free man. . . The said fellow run away the 16th of February 1765,
and was absent near two years.”
23 September 1769
FAUQUIER. “ has a smooth insinuating way of talking . . . being an artful subtle fellow, [I] imagine he
will go as much in disguise as possible, to prevent suspicion.”
4
5
15 November 1770
William Byrd, letter to Lord Perceval, Earl of Egmont, 12 July 1736. in Marion Tinling, ed., The Correspondence of the Three William Byrds of
Westover, Virginia, Vol. II (University of Virginia Press, 1977); permission pending.
Runaway slave advertisements, in online collection Virginia Runaways: Runaway Slave Advertisements from 18th-Century Virginia Newspapers, by
Prof. Thomas Costa, University of Virginia at Wise; at people.uvawise.edu/runaways; permission pending.
National Humanities Center
2
“keep a constant guard over them”
. . . the people in general might be persuaded of the
necessity there is for everyone that has negroes to
Daniel Horsmanden, 1747
keep a very watchful eye over them and not to indulge
Horsmanden was a judge in the trials of white and
them with too great liberties, which we find they make
black New Yorkers for an alleged plot to set fires in
use of to the worst purposes, caballing and
the city in 1741. He explains the necessity of pubconfederating together in mischief, in great numbers
lishing documents related to the trials.
when they may, from the accounts in the ensuing
sheets [pages], from what they see has happened, feel the consequence of giving them so great a latitude
as has been customary in this city and province [colony], and thereby be warned to keep themselves upon
a strict guard against these enemies of their own household, since we know what they are capable of; for it
was notorious that those among them who had the kindest masters, who fared best and had the most
liberty, nay, that those in whom their masters placed the greatest confidence, insomuch that they would
even have put their own swords into their hands in expectation of being defended by them against their
own colour, did nevertheless turn out the great villains. . . The principal inducement, therefore, to this
undertaking was the public benefit that those who property in slaves might have a lasting memento
concerning the nature of them; that they may be thence warned to keep a constant guard over them, since
what they have done, they may one time or other act over again, . . . 6
5
“Eternal slavery to them . . .
is an unbearable yoke”
10th Question. Whether these people are as false, malicious,
and terrible as they are described.
Rev. Johann Martin Bolzius, 17506
Answer. A faithful and sincere Negro is a very rare thing, but
they do exist, particularly with masters who know how to treat
Bolzius, a cofounder of the German Luththem reasonably and in a Christian way. Foolish masters
eran settlement of Ebenezer, Georgia,
sometimes make disloyal and malicious Negroes. Nearly all
published a Q&A guide for potential
immigrants that included questions on
like to lie and steal, and if they gain the upper hand in a
slaves and slavery.
rebellion they give no mercy, but treat the whites very cruelly.
Eternal slavery to them, as to all people, is an unbearable
yoke, and very hard treatment as regards food and work exasperates them greatly. New Negroes therefore
must be treated very carefully, for they frequently take their own lives out of desperation, with the hope of
resurrection in their homeland, and of rejoining their people. 7
8
“contented with their condition,
reconciled to servitude”
I have said there are 40,000 Negroes in the province, these if
valued as new Negroes from Africa are now sold, may be
reckoned at £20 sterling per head, but this valuation does not
Gov. James Glen, 17517
satisfy me for when it is considered that many of these are
In a report to the British Board of Trade, the
natives of Carolina, who have no notion of liberty, nor no
governor of South Carolina asserts that the
longing after any other country, that they have been brought
American-born slaves are content and have
up among white people, and by white people have been made,
“no notion of liberty.”
at least many of them, useful mechanics, as coopers,
carpenters, masons, smiths, wheelwrights, and other trades, and that the rest can all speak our language,
for we imported none during the war. I say when it is considered that these are pleased with their masters,
6
Serena R. Rabin, ed., The New York Conspiracy Trials of 1741: Daniel Horsmanden’s Journal of the Proceedings, with Related Documents
(Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2004), pp. 45-46; permission pending. Sabin’s edition is based on the 1810 reprint of the 1747 original; she notes the
change in title made by the anonymous 1810 editor ⎯ The New-York Conspiracy or a History of the Negro Plot. “The title removes whites from center
stage and reformulates the ‘conspiracy’ as a ‘Negro plot.’ [p. 37].
7
Rev. Johann Martin Bolzius, Reliable Answer to Some Submitted Questions Concerning the Land Carolina in Which Answer, However, Regard Is
Also Paid at the Same Time to the Condition of the Colony of Georgia,1750; reprinted in The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, 14:2 (April 1957),
pp. 218-261; trans., eds., Klaus G. Loewald, Beverly Starika, and Paul S. Taylor. Reproduced by permission of The William and Mary Quarterly.
8
Gov. James Glen, An Attempt Towards an Estimate of the Value of South Carolina, for the Right Honourable the Lords Commissioners for Trade and
Plantations, 1751; in H. Roy Merrens, ed., The Colonial South Carolina Scene: Contemporary Views, 1697-1774 (University of South Carolina Press,
1977), pp. 182-183; permission pending.
National Humanities Center
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contented with their condition, reconciled to servitude, seasoned to the country, and expert at the different
kinds of labour in which they are employed, it must appear difficult if not impracticable to ascertain their
intrinsic value. I know a gentleman who refused five hundred guineas for three of his slaves, and therefore there is no guessing at the value of the strong seasoned handy slaves, by the prices of weak, raw, new
Negroes.
9
“some into madness fly”
Charles Hansford, 1753
8
A Virginia blacksmith, Hansford published poems anonymously in the
Virginia Gazette. These are the first
lines of his poem entitled “The
Country’s Worth.”
That most men have a great respect and love
To their own place of birth I need not prove—
Experience shows ’tis true; and the black brood
Of sunburnt Affrick makes the assertion good.
I oft with pleasure have observ’d how they
Their sultry country’s worth strive to display
In broken language, how they praise their case
And happiness when in their native place.
Such tales and such descriptions, when I’d leisure,
And many times with questions would assail
The sable lad to lengthen out his tale.
If, then, those wretched people so admire
Their native place and have so great desire
To reenjoy and visit it again—
Which, if by any means they might attain,
How would they dangers court pains endure
If to their country they could get secure!
But, barr’d of that, some into madness fly,
Destroy themselves, and wretchedly they die.
Nor is this love to Affrick’s race confin’d
But spreads itself (I think) through human kind.
A northern Tartar forc’d from thence would show
The warmest wishes for his ice and snow
Which in that climate doth so much abound
That they for months in caves live underground;
The snow so deep, the cold is so intense
Above ground, houses would be no defense.
For food their case must needs be very bad:
Horse-flesh and milk of mares by them are had
In much esteem. (A loathsome bill of fare—
Methinks t’would poison me did I live there!)
And yet those people love and like it well,
And praise (no doubt) the country where they dwell.
10
“rendered tame, docile, and submissive”
Boyrereau Brinch, late 1750s
9
Brinch was captured in west Africa (probably Mali) in the late
1750s and imprisoned on the Caribbean island of Barbados
before being sold to a New England merchant.
9
10
Thus I remained for about three months from the
time I was taken from the ship, starved,
whipped, and tortured in the most shameful
manner, obliged to work unceasingly, in order I
suppose that the clement, benevolent and
charitable whiteman should be satisfied that the
David S. Shields, ed., American Poetry: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Library of America, 2007) pp. 329, 854; permission pending.
Boyrereau Brinch & Benjamin F. Prentiss, The Blind African Slave, or Memoirs of Boyrereau Brinch, Nick-named Jeffrey Brace. Containing an
Account of the Kingdom of Bow-Woo, in the Interior of Africa, Vermont: 1810; full text in Documenting the American South (University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill Library) at docsouth.unc.edu/neh/brinch/menu.htm.
National Humanities Center
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heathen spirit of an African boy of noble birth should be sufficiently subdued, rendered tame, docile and
submissive; and all for my good that I should thereby become a tame, profitable and honest slave. The
natural man must be obliterated and degraded, that even the thought of liberty must never be suffered to
contaminate itself in a negro’s mind; and the odious thing, equality, should be taught by European
discipline never to raise its head.
11
“when you make men slaves, you
deprive them of half their virtue”
Such a tendency has the slave-trade to debauch men’s
minds, and harden them to every feeling of humanity! For
I will not suppose that the dealers in slaves are born
Olaudah Equiano, mid 1750s10
worse than other men ⎯ No; it is the fatality of this
Equiano was captured in west Africa (present-day
mistaken avarice that it corrupts the milk of human
Nigeria) in the mid 1750s and was eventually sold
kindness and turns it into gall. And had the pursuits of
in Virginia. In his 1789 autobiography, he pubthose men been different, they might have been as
lished these thoughts on the dehumanizing effect
generous, as tender-hearted and just, as they are
of slavery on both the enslaved and the enslaver.
unfeeling, rapacious and cruel. Surely this traffic cannot
be good which spreads like a pestilence and taints what it touches! which violates that first natural right of
mankind, equality and independency, and gives one man a dominion over his fellows which God could
never intend! For it raises the owner to a state as far above man as it depresses the slave below it; and,
with all the presumption of human pride, sets a distinction between them, immeasurable in extent, and
endless in duration! Yet how mistaken is the avarice even of the planters? Are slaves more useful by
being thus humbled to the condition of brutes, than they would be if suffered to enjoy the privileges of
men? The freedom which diffuses health and prosperity throughout Britain answers you ⎯ No.
When you make men slaves, you deprive them of half their virtue, you set them in your own conduct
an example of fraud, rapine, and cruelty, and compel them to live with you in a state of war; and yet you
complain that they are not honest or faithful! You stupify them with stripes [i.e., from whipping], and
think it necessary to keep them in a state of ignorance; and yet you assert that they are incapable of
learning; that their minds are such a barren soil or moor that culture would be lost on them; and that they
come from a climate where nature, though prodigal of her bounties in a degree unknown to yourselves,
has left man alone scant and unfinished, and incapable of enjoying the treasures she has poured out for
him! ⎯ An assertion at once impious and absurd. Why do you use those instruments of torture? Are they
fit to be applied by one rational being to another; And are ye not struck with shame and mortification to
see the partakers of your nature reduced so low? But, above all, are there no dangers attending this mode
of treatment? Are you not hourly in dread of an insurrection?
12
Landon Carter, 175811
A Cow calved and the Calf died by reason of neglect in putting her into a Stall
at such a time when she ought to have been in a house and at full liberty; but
negroes will do these things and white people are more deceitful. 17 Feb. 1758
A Virginia planter, Carter
revealed contempt for his
slaves, and white people,
in his diary entries.
The cockling wheat this year an immense trouble occasioned by the Rascal
who was overseer last year at the Fork who never saw the work well done
there and from thence came most of my seed wheat.
25 March 1758
“slaves are devils”
The brutes who suffered [allowed] my tobacco to be so eaten [by worms]
shall be severely punished, by every method not barbarous that I can
devise. . . . Indeed, Slaves are devils and to make them otherwise than
slaves will be to set devils free.
31 August 1758
11
Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself, London: 1789; full
text in Documenting the American South (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library), Vol. I at docsouth.unc.edu/neh/equiano1/menu.html;
Vol. II at docsouth.unc.edu/neh/equiano2/menu.html.
12
The Diary of Landon Carter of Sabine Hall, 1752-1778, ed. Jack P. Greene (University Press of Virginia, published for the Virginia Historical Society,
1965), Vol. 1; permission pending.
National Humanities Center
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“a higher Opinion of the natural
Capacities of the black Race”
I have visited the Negro School here in Company with the
Rev[eren]d. Mr. Sturgeon and some others, and had the
Children thoroughly examin’d. They appear’d all to have
Benjamin Franklin, 176312
made considerable Progress in Reading for the Time they
had respectively been in the School, and most of them
Franklin describes the “Negro school”
in Philadelphia to a friend in England.
answer’d readily and well the Questions of the Catechism.
They behav’d very orderly, show’d a proper Respect and
ready Obedience to the Mistress, and seem’d very attentive to, and a good deal affected by, a serious
Exhortation with which Mr. Sturgeon concluded our Visit. 13
I was on the whole much pleas’d, and from what I then saw, have conceiv’d a higher Opinion of the
natural Capacities of the black Race than I had ever before entertained. Their Apprehension seems as
quick, their Memory as strong, and their Docility in every Respect equal to that of white Children. You
will wonder perhaps that I should ever doubt it, and I will not undertake to justify all my Prejudices, nor
to account for them.
14
“Some view our sable race
with scornful eye”
Phillis Wheatley, 1773
13
Wheatley was captured as a young
girl in west Africa about 1760. The
Boston family that purchased her
encouraged her education and
creativity, and in 1773 her first
volume of poems was published,
__“On Being Brought from Africa to America”__
‘Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there’s a God, that there’s a Savior too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
“Their colour is a diabolic dye.”
Remember Christian; Negroes, black as Cain,
May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train.
15
“good enough for
the black dog”
. . . going to New-London [Connecticut] with a grandchild, I took passage
in an Indian’s boat, and went there with him. On our return, the Indian took
on board two hogsheads of molasses, one of which belonged to Capt. Elisha
Venture Smith, 179214
Hart of Saybrook, to be delivered on his wharf. When we arrived there, and
Smith was captured in west
while I was gone, at the request of the Indian to inform Captain Hart of his
Africa in the mid 1730s and
arrival and receive the freight for him, one hogshead of the molasses had
ultimately sold to a Rhode
been lost overboard by the people in attempting to land it on the wharf.
Island merchant. He worked
Although I was absent at the time, and had no concern whatever in the
to purchase freedom for
himself and his family. In his
business, as was known to a number of respectable witnesses, I was neverautobiography he relates this
theless prosecuted by this conscientious gentleman (the Indian not being
incident from 1792.
able to pay for it) and obliged to pay upwards of ten pounds lawful money,
with all the costs of court. . . Such a proceeding as this, committed on a
defenceless stranger, almost worn out in the hard service of the world, without any foundation in reason
or justice, whatever it may be called in a christian land, would in my native country have been branded as
a crime equal to highway robbery. But Captain Hart was a white gentleman, and I a poor African, therefore it was all right, and good enough for the black dog.
13
Benjamin Franklin, Letter to John Waring, 17 December 1763. The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, Yale University and the American Philosophical
Society, #624225; permission pending.
Phillis Wheatley, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, 1773; in Wheatley & Margaretta Matilda Odell, Memoir and Poems of Phillis
Wheatley, a Native African and a Slave. Dedicated to the Friends of the Africans, Boston, 1834; full text in Documenting the American South
(University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) at docsouth.unc.edu/neh/wheatley/menu.html.
15
Venture Smith, A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, A Native of Africa: But Resident above Sixty Years in the United States of
America. Related by Himself, New London, Connecticut, 1798. Full text in Documenting the American South (University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill) at docsouth.unc.edu/neh/venture/menu.html.
14
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